review 1: I initially struggled a bit with the way this book is written as the story is narrated by Sid, a half caste from Baltimore who was a jazz musician in Berlin and then Paris in the 1930s, and the language used reflects how he would have spoken. However, I was quickly absorbed by the story of how he played with a group of jazz musicians who were forced underground by the Nazis and eventually lost their talented black trumpeter Hiero Falk, who is picked up and sent to a concentration camp from Paris. The historical action is interwoven with the story of the 82 year old Sid and the drummer from the band, Chip, who travel back to Berlin for a Hiero Falk festival. Both stories gradually unravel, offering different perspectives on the events and showing how the events in the 1930s... more/WW2 echoed through the whole of Sid and Chip's lives. Overall, I really enjoyed it, I was just left feeling a bit deflated by the anti-climactic ending. review 2: I liked this book very much, in fact it was riveting. But I can't understand how it got to be nominated as "the book to start a conversation Canadians must have." Its connections with Canada, in terms of content, were a bit tenuous though of course, the author is Canadian and has done an extraordinary job in writing such a tale. She skilfully adjusts the writing stle, conversation, even the narrative, to reflect the way her characters would talk but I think I was halfway through the book before I clued into that. The narrative style flows so artfully that it really could be someone reminiscing. I'd like to read more of her books. less
